


Defying Gravity

by HazardousFancy



Category: Hercules (1997)
Genre: Hercules - Freeform, Oneshot, hercules 1997, hercules 1998, icarus - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 04:49:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12904416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazardousFancy/pseuds/HazardousFancy
Summary: 13 year-old-Icarus's first time flying with his own wings. I don't remember what inspired me to write this, it's pretty dramatic, but that's Icarus for you. Trigger warning for almost drowning, fear of heights, trauma, everything you'd expect.





	Defying Gravity

In what couldn’t have been more than an inch of movement, dust and pebbles rolled out from under Icarus’s sandals and off the cliff, and his heart skipped a beat. Or two. Or twelve. He watched them fall down, down, down and out of sight as he tried to catch his breath, reeling from the notion that the fate of those pebbles might also be his.

So many warning signs flashed in his head as he became hyper-aware of how closes to the edge his feet really were. The blinding nature of the sun, the suffocating terror of the ocean, the isolated sensation of falling, falling, falling through dead air, and everything seemed to go quiet. Quiet enough so death could whisper,  
_I’m waiting for you, Icarus._

It was, wasn’t it? He’d cheated it, hadn’t he? He was living on borrowed time. Something he accepted much too surely for a 13-year-old boy. But here he was, ready to challenge it anyway.

And his pulse spiked again, but this time it was delight. The same feeling that brought him to this cliff face. The feeling that pulled on his heart so hard he couldn’t fight it anymore, and followed it where it led him. It led him to duplicate his father’s plans in secret - so unsure of what Daedalus would think. Led him to dream of birds. Of the sky. Of Apollo and Hermes. Led him to stand on the cliff’s edge and stare with unbearable longing at the immaculate upside-down sea of blue space above him.  
There was nothing healthy or rational about it, but it was almost as if it was out of his control. It had been barely a year since it had happened, and he couldn’t think of the incident for more than a moment lest he go into a fit of terror. He re-lived it almost every night in his sleep, and often woke up in heat. Terrible heat. His own body heat, but that his less rational self insisted was the sun screaming from under his skin. Heat that refused to die, because it was a part of him now. Any view of the ocean was an enemy, an enemy that fought him with nausea and vertigo.

Daedalus loved Icarus dearly, but he was not a sensitive man, and made no attempt to excuse his son from being forced to meet Greece’s edge. And as a result, it was all too frequently that he was subjected to this feeling of terror. Memories of falling, of death in the quiet open sky, of petrifying terror, then seemingly immediately sinking, sinking, darker, colder, heavier, the pain, struggling against the torture of suffocation until he could struggle no more, his thoughts foggier and foggier, fear turning to submission as his consciousness departing with the inches of saltwater he left above him, becoming numb, immobilized. Closer and closer to death, veritably smothered in its embrace. And then, nothing. Until he woke up to the despair of crashing waves and open sea, the only solace Daedalus’s embrace in the middle of such hopelessness.

He’d lost track of how many cliff edges he’d lost his lunch on. Tears and taste he had to hurry to wipe away before any human contact was initiated. He wanted to love the ocean. He certainly never had anything against it before. He couldn’t swim, which he knew was unusual, but he was a latchkey child. No friends and a busy father, most of his childhood spent indoors, he’d never really had any chance to learn. But the ocean always looked beautiful. Even tempting, if he had to describe it. It beckoned as much as anything that was the subject of so many stories of adventure. But that beauty was very much poisoned for him now. Once glance and he tasted saltwater. Sunburn. Exhaustion. Despair.

But yet, here he was. Maybe it was result of the first time he realized he could look at it without becoming sick. That was what he wanted to tell himself - that he was here to laugh in the face of the ocean. It hadn’t broken him. He was going to tame its skies, just out of spite. To prove his life was still his own.  
As much as he wanted to believe that, he knew it was a lie. He was here for reasons he couldn’t explain. Sure, that feeling of defiance gave his adrenaline a head. But it wasn’t the reason he was here. Wasn’t what led him to stand firm, even with shaking limbs. Wasn’t what possessed him to build his rig. To put on the wings that had so violently betrayed him only eleven months ago. Wasn't what caused him to _smile_ at the sun on his face, at the breeze behind him, coaxing him forward. He had no reasons he could explain for why he was about to do what he was going to do. But gods, he wanted to do it. He wanted it terribly. Maybe more than anything he had ever wanted in his young life.  
Maybe it was about control, there wasn't much in his life that was really his, after all. Or maybe it was about adrenaline. He couldn't remember a single positive thing about his journey from Crete, but maybe his body did. He certainly was feeling a rush now.

...He had it.

Freedom.

Reality, Greece, had little to offer Icarus. It was hard for him to grasp. Hard for him to communicate with. Putting his thoughts into understandable, casual words was sometimes an impossible feat. People didn't like him. He knew they didn't think he noticed, but he did. His father was everything to him, but he wasn't one for personal conversation, and when he was with his mother almost all he could think about was how she just _wasn’t there._ Teachers rolled their eyes at him. Cassandra, his newest middle school obsession, rejected him constantly. Things never tended to really go his way, but that was okay, it was hardly his world anyway.  
Or at least, that's what he thought.

Being on the edge of the cliff, everything at his back felt heavier than ever before. The weight of all of it was nearly crushing. Part of him wanted to crumble, right here and right now. Trapped between the sky that burned him and the earth that rejected him. Wanted to drop to his knees and sob, give into cowardice.  
But a bigger part of him wanted to fight that impulse. He wanted to be free of that burden, if just for a little while. He wanted an escape. And he knew, even with this realization, that wasn't the whole truth - there was still something pulling him upward he couldn't explain. Because there was no excuse for why his freedom came at the behest of the same experience that had scarred him so deeply. But this explanation was enough for Icarus; and it was a true one. He really did want that freedom. He wanted to leave his life behind. Being slight and easy to ignore wasn't enough. He wanted to be _weightless._

And with one final thought, a line to himself stating _‘you can **do this,** Icarus.’_ He leapt.


End file.
